Day Zero

No click-bait title today, only the optimism that comes with properly starting work on a new project.

More on the what later. Today was mainly about planning, which feels somewhat instinctive at this time on a Monday. I know that I can struggle with knowing where to get started, and with over-enthusiasm, so I’m being very strict with myself.

Every task in the plan has a “Done when” part that contains a concrete statement of what finished looks like, so that I’ll know that I’ve hit it. This fits perfectly with the way my brain works, hopefully allowing me to check the box and move on. I am a fan of constant forward progress.

I’m targeting a late May launch date, but have built in plenty of buffer, so it might be sooner than that. I’ve scheduled the hardest and fiddliest tasks for when my energy and focus are likely to be the highest. I have explicitly noted not to grind away at something for more than 90 minutes without taking a break, and have limited myself to a three-pass approach to content revisions.

I’ve also taken the time to list out what not to work on over this period. My natural instinct is to build everything, but having a useful thing live is better than having a perfect thing sat gathering dust. If I do feel tempted by any sidequests, I am hoping that this will help me to keep on track.

One non-negotiable is accessibility. I took a photo of this quote when leaving a work meeting some years back. It was part of an exhibition that has stuck with me since then.

“It wasn’t your impairments that stopped you. It was the way that society was constructed.”

I would hope this is standard these days, but I don’t want anyone to be excluded from any part of this project. It is important to me to ensure that the thing I’m building is barrier-free. I’ve added multiple checkpoints on the project plan for me to confirm that I’m meeting standards as I go.